


Why Stephen King Started Writing About Gan

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a fic I originally wrote in comments on someone's LJ, and I cannot for the life of me remember why. Aziraphale takes exception to God as portrayed in Stephen King's <em>Desperation</em>, and goes to see the author to tell him off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Stephen King Started Writing About Gan

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley belong to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Stephen and Tabby King belong to themselves.

Aziraphale liked books. He liked comfortably thick tomes that one could sit down with in a cosy armchair beside a roaring open fireplace and sip piping hot tea while reading. He especially liked dusty old hardcovers jam-packed with words, because all that writing had to mean _something_.

Crowley, being of a perverse sense of humour, gave him a copy of Stephen King’s _Desperation_ for his birthday. It wasn't Aziraphale's sort of book at all. For one thing, it bent. Aziraphale didn't trust books that bent. You never knew when the words might get loose and start being unpredictable. Nevertheless, he dutifully sat down and read it, because it was a present, and because it was, after all, a reasonably thick book.

By halfway through the second chapter, his eyebrows had risen so far up his forehead, they resembled two caterpillars perched atop his hair, ready to unfurl wings from their cocoons and flutter merrily away.

By the end of the book, he had a neatly penned list beside the armchair of Points To Raise In Discussion, and his tea had gone cold.

He went to see the author. This was not nearly as difficult as it had been even as few as fifty years previously, given the convenience of air travel these days, and he was getting better at not being airsick.

'Mr King, do you _really_ think this is how God works?' he asked upon accessing the inner sanctum of the author's study (a feat that only required him to pause time a little bit so he could slip past Tabby in the kitchen without her noticing).

'Who the hell are you?' Steve asked, quite reasonably.

Aziraphale pushed the door gently shut. 'That's not important right now. What's important is the impression you're giving people of God in this book.'

Steve rubbed his glasses clean and blinked at the blue-bound paperback. 'Oh. But it's just what came out when I wrote the book. I thought it was important that David have a proper source of power to battle Tak.'

'And you couldn't make up a positive power source to combat the negative one? God's not just a character you can -- _whomp_ into any old fiction you like!'

'People do, you know.'

'Well -- well, right now you're the one I'm standing in front of, and I'll yell at the rest of them _later_.' Aziraphale rather felt that he was losing control of the conversation. 'My point is, have you ever been in the presence of God?'

'I don't know,' Steve said cautiously. 'I've been to church.'

'There is a big difference,' Aziraphale said kindly, 'between spending an hour sitting on a hard wooden bench singing hymns, and feeling the Presence of the Almighty.'

'That's what I was trying to get across in the book! David's faith is more than just Sunday belief, he--' Steve broke off and stared suspiciously at Aziraphale. 'You're not a Jehovah's Witness, are you? Tabby usually turns them away.'

'I,' said Aziraphale, in a somewhat wounded tone, 'happen to be an angel.'

There was a brief silence. It was followed immediately by a rather longer silence. This silence was conveniently interrupted by the arrival of Crowley.

'So this is where you got to. Whatever are you doing?' He looked Steve up and down and then turned back to Aziraphale. 'Is this because of that book? I thought it might wind you up.'

Aziraphale opened his mouth to explain just how not-wound-up he was, but what came out was an angry '!' at the thought of Crowley being such a git, yet _again_.

'I think you'd better leave,' Steve said firmly, getting up at last and taking one step towards the door.

'Not until I do what I came here to do,' Aziraphale said, shaking himself free of the anger and monosyllabic punctuation-speak. 'Crowley, kindly bugger off for a minute.'

'But I want to see you try and convert him.'

'I'm not going to,' Aziraphale said, nudging Crowley towards the door. 'I'm merely going to show him the true Power of Divinity.' He pushed Crowley into the hallway, and turned back towards Steve. 'Now,' he said. 'Pay close attention. I'm only going to do this once.'

 

* * *

 

'So what did you do?' Crowley practically had to run to keep up with Aziraphale as the angel marched down the driveway.

'As I said, I showed him the true Power of Divinity.'

'You didn't...'

'Don't be obscene.'

'I'm not!' Crowley protested in an injured tone so badly faked it might as well have been limping on the wrong leg. 'I'm only _asking_.'

'Let's just say that I think Mr King will present a rather different notion of the nature of God in his future books. People need to know that God doesn't just come when He's called, you know.'

Crowley snagged Aziraphale's arm. 'Come on, you evangelistic idiot. I brought the car. I knew you'd get on your high horse about this.'

'He's lucky I don't still have the sword,' Aziraphale grumbled.

'I think everyone is,' Crowley said, ushering Aziraphale into the car and shutting the door firmly.


End file.
